


The Way You Love It

by volatileSoloist



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Punk, Concerts, M/M, Secret Crush, Skipping Class, Symptoms of ADHD, Vague but long descriptions of classical music, Vaping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 04:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13115940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volatileSoloist/pseuds/volatileSoloist
Summary: Mako easily convinced his long-time crush Jamie to skip class so they could go to a concert together.For the Roadrat Riders Discord’s Secret Santa event!





	The Way You Love It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RoadhogTime](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=RoadhogTime).



If you only went by look, you’d never know it was winter. In most places, the coming of colder weather was marked by sheets of snow and ice. But in Sydney, Australia, winters were truly very mild. Still, it’s on one of the cooler days of the season that Mako finds himself letting his bike roll to a stop before dismounting, and then helping his friend Jamie down from the bike.

Mako and Jamie had been friends since they’d met at a punk concert a year and a half ago. Mako’d had a crush on Jamie since the moment they’d first crossed paths. Jamie had been crowd surfing, and Mako hadn’t been paying attention; suddenly, a gangling figure had toppled onto him, and while normally Mako could easily support the weight of another person, he’d been taken by surprise, and the two had gone tumbling to the ground.

They’d hit it off immediately afterward, bonding over their love of everything punk. Jamie was always sporting some kind of worn bomber jacket with a bunch of band patches sewed clumsily on by hand. He’s wearing one today, as a matter of fact—but for once, that makes Mako embarrassed: it’s a stark contrast from his more conservative polo and dress pants.

Jamie looks up at the concert hall with no small measure of confusion, before realization dawns in his eyes. “Well, I guess now I know why ya not wearing ya leathers.”

Mako turns to look at his friend, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah… I should’ve been more clear.”

“Yeah,” Jamie titters uneasily. “This, uh… this wasn’t quite what I had in mind when ya said ya wanted me ta wag school so we could go ta a concert.”

Mako had been building up the courage to ask Jamie out. It’d been a slow process, and Mako didn’t even know if Jamie swung that way, but he wanted the moment he confessed his feelings to be something special, and he knew he wanted to share something he liked with Jamie. Then, as luck would have it, he saw a flyer for the local concert house, where a distinguished orchestra would be playing at noon in a week’s time. Mako loved classical music as much as he loved punk rock, and he knew he wouldn’t have any trouble convincing Jamie to skip school so they could go together.

Now, they’re finally at the concert house, and Mako realizes the depth of their miscommunication. Would Jamie think he was boring for liking classical music? Would he want to leave? He eyes his crush nervously as his calculating gaze swept over the facade of the building before landing back on Mako, who resists the urge to look away from his intense stare.

Then, Jamie gives a small smile, and fiddles with the edge of his jacket. “Should I take this off, then?”

“I mean,” Mako hems, torn between his desire to keep Jamie happy and his desire to not get kicked out of the concert hall. Eventually, practicality wins. “I’d keep it. It could be cold in there.”

“Aces!” Jamie says with a smile—and oh, how Mako loves it when he smiles—but when Mako just stands there, he shifts antsily. “We gonna go in?”

“Right, yeah, let’s.” God, could Mako get any more awkward?

The two of them walk side-by-side into the concert hall until they finally made it to the door of the particular theatre they’d be watching from. The ticket-taker stares hard at Jamie when they approach, but when Mako straightens himself up and broadens his shoulders in the way he knows intimidates others, the man pales and takes the tickets Mako brandishes at him.

“So, where we sittin’, Mako? I don’t reckon one a these places got a mosh pit,” Jamie says, playfully jabbing Mako with his elbow.

“No,” Mako says with a laugh. “I got us box seats. You can usually appreciate the sounds of the orchestra best from above.” _And it’s nice and private._

“Fancy,” Jamie muses, and the two of them make their way up the stairs to their seats. Jamie rushes to the edge of the box straight away, oohing and ahhing at the height. “Wow, ya really _can_ see everything from up here! Christ, this place is enormous.”

Mako sits down, enjoying himself as he watches Jamie have fun. _Maybe it won’t be so bad for him after all._ As the seats below begin to fill up, and the lights start to dim, Jamie finally sits down in his seat next to Mako, reclining in his chair and kicking his feet up on the edge of the box. Mako winces inwardly, but decides to say nothing.

In the end, it doesn’t matter: Jamie turns to look at Mako, and upon seeing him sitting forward attentively, he shifts to match him. Just in time, too, as the conductor makes his way onto the stage. Once he does, applause sounds from the audience. Mako joins in, and shortly afterward, Jamie mimics him. He sits forward in anticipation of the concert starting, but immediately looks confused as the first notes from the orchestra were discordant.

“They’re tuning their instruments,“ Mako says. “After that, they can start.”

“So many rules,” Jamie mutters, but his tone doesn’t sound too annoyed, so Mako decides not to worry too much.

Finally, the conductor raises his baton, and quiet music begins to roll through the hall. Mako’s eyes are trained on the orchestra, watching the coordinated movements of the violinists, and then the pianist’s fluttering fingers. As the first piece ends, and the second piece began to start with an increase in volume, he finds himself enraptured by the music, enveloped in the tones that reverberates through the hall. It was only as the third section starts that he tears himself away from the sight to glance over at Jamie.

He… boy, does he look… well, Mako isn’t sure what he’s seeing. It’s like boredom that almost seems to border on anxiety; Jamie is messing with the stitches of his jacket with one hand, while the other is nestled in his hair, almost pulling at the dyed strands. But his eyes are firmly on Mako.

Mako leans over, worried, and murmurs, “Hey, you okay?”

Jamie starts and looks away quickly, caught in the act of staring. “Yeah,” he mumbles, releasing his death grips on his jacket and hair. His left hand moves down to settle on Mako’s side of the armrest, and Mako doesn’t even think twice before he works a few of his brass rings off his fingers, grabs Jamie’s hand and coaxes it open to drop the jewelry into his palm.

Jamie looks at him in utter surprise, and Mako feels his face reddening slightly as he leans over to whisper, “If you need to fidget with something, I’d give you my rings any day over watching you pull your own hair out.”

Something almost like a smile appears on Jamie’s lips, and he slides the too-large rings onto his fingers, where he can spin them around to his heart’s content. Relieved, Mako turns back to the concert, just as they start the last piece of the first half.

Mako looks over at Jamie again a few more times, though, just to be safe. More often than not, he sees, out of the corner of his eye, Jamie watching him—but whenever he turns to look back, Jamie’s staring off into the distance, twisting the rings around his thumbs in a repetitive motion. It makes Mako worry, just a bit. Why was Jamie staring at him so much? He self-consciously raises a hand to smooth out his hair, checking to see if it was overly unruly, but everything seems to be in order.

The last notes of the piece ring out into the hall, and Mako claps along with the rest of the audience until he sees a sudden movement in his peripheral vision; when he looks, Jamie is gone.

———

Jamie’s leaning against the outer wall of the building and vaping when Mako finally finds him. Normally, Mako wouldn’t care—in fact, he’d be happy, because Jamie used to smoke until they became friends and found out that Mako has asthma—but right now, his sinking heart distracts him. After all, Jamie only does this when he’s stressed.

“I take it you’re not enjoying the concert,” Mako says, leaning next to Jamie.

Jamie’s brow furrows, and he blows out a stream of vapor contemplatively. “Ta be honest, mate? Not really. I mean… I just don’t have the attention span for somethin’ like this.”

Mako sighs, caught between shame and disappointment. “Yeah. We can leave if you want—”

“Now hang on a second, Mako,” Jamie interrupts. He opens his mouth to continue, but flushes and instead fills the nascent silence by turning off his vape and unscrewing the pieces. After he tucks them into his pocket, he finally turns back to Mako, who waits patiently but with bated breath, and says, “Even if _I_ didn’t like it… I mean, I find somethin’ worthwhile in watchin’ you watchin’ it. It’s… it’s cute.”

Mako, caught completely off-guard by the statement, just gapes at his companion. “What do you mean?”

If it’s possible, Jamie blushes even harder. “I just… I love the way ya love it. Ya seem so passionate about it, Mako. Ya face lights up when the music starts. I couldn’t look away.”

Mako struggles hard against the smile that wants to overtake his features, and ends up losing. Jamie beams back at him, and the two stand in a comfortable silence for a moment.

“Um, excuse me?” The moment is broken by an uncertain voice, and both young men turn to see the ticket-taker from earlier. “The second half’s about to start.” In his hand, he holds out the concert program, which Mako had forgotten to take earlier.

Mako grabs it, and flips it open to see what the last part of the concert will include. It’s one single piece, but when Mako reads what it is, he can’t help but laugh. “We’ll come in soon,” he says, and the other man leaves as quickly as he came.

“What’s it say?” Jamie asks, craning over to read over Mako’s shoulder.

Quickly, Mako holds it out of Jamie’s reach and says, “You’ll see.” The mystique must have been intriguing enough, because Jamie’s quick to follow him back inside. They ascend the steps and sit down in the box seats just in time for an entire choir to walk onstage.

“That’s new,” Jamie remarks, and Mako nods before turning back to the singers as they start. The first few minutes are marked by nothing but the soft harmonies of the choir, then with a quiet accompaniment.

He turns to look at Jamie, who is once again staring at him, and gets to see him jolt as the the music begins to louden and get more dramatic, leaving the choir behind. This heightened mood only lasts for another few minutes, before quieting down. As drums begin to patter and the woodwinds and brass pick up, quietly playing the songs’ leitmotif, he can see a small amount of recognition in his crush’s face. Jamie mouths at him, “Have I heard this before?”

Mako only winks in reply, and the two turn back as the music begins to play faster and louder again. The trumpets are having a field-day, and it seemingly intrigues Jamie more than any of the other songs from the concert. The sounds rise, swell, and fall again to the quiet thrumming of the violins, briefly becoming more peaceful. It sounds almost wistful for a minute or two before becoming choral again, the singers jumping briefly before the music fades to nothing.

Jamie raises his hands to clap, but the music suddenly rises again, becoming more suspenseful in tone, building up, drums kicking in to the crowing of the trumpets. The leitmotif sounds again before quieting down. Jamie seems stumped by the musical progression, but Mako knows that the build up of this piece is worth it in the end.

The orchestra goes quiet again, playing softly but with urgency, the violins and trumpets picking up the pace. Then, all of a sudden—

**BOOM!**

Jamie jumps completely out of his seat and up to his feet, startled but expression completely awed. There’s another few moments of music before there’s another loud **boom** , and then another. Were it not for the fact that they were indoors, it would almost be a dead ringer for cannonfire.

The music crescendos slowly. The choir jumps in, church bells toll, drums thunder, and trumpets cry out just in time for—

The song’s leitmotif plays in earnest, and soon enough, the roaring, booming sounds begin again as the choir sings and the bells ring, and Jamie looks completely overstimulated but more happy than he’s been all evening. It’s over all too soon, and there’s one last thundering boom, and the music fades entirely. This time, there’s no keeping Jamie quiet, and as he begins to clap and whoop, the audience follows his lead to applaud the phenomenal display of talent that just occurred before their eyes.

Jamie swivels to look at Mako, pupils blown and grin wide. “That was brilliant! Hell, mate, I didn’t even know you could _do_ somethin’ like that, and call it _classical_!”

Mako smiles back at him, basking in Jamie’s excitement. “Knew you’d like it.”

He runs over to the edge of the box seats and looks around, trying to find the source of the loud booming from before. “Were those real cannons, do ya think?”

Mako laughs and shakes his head. “You tell me, anarchist-wannabe.”

Jamie doesn’t rise to his jibe, more focused on his goal, and he turns back to face the theatre. Mako can hear him sniffing before he sags slightly. “Can’t smell any gunpowder, so…”

“The original scoring does call for real cannonfire, though. I’ll take you to see it someday.”

That immediately puts the smile back on Jamie’s face. “Sounds like a plan ta me, mate!”

It was a smile Mako could never get tired of.

———

The final piece is all Jamie talks about as they leave the concert hall and walk up to Mako’s bike. It’s only when Jamie hops onto the backseat behind Mako that he falls quiet.

“What’s up?” Mako grunts, and shivers imperceptibly—or at least, he hopes it is—as Jamie gently wraps his arms around Mako from behind. It’s not the first time it’s ever happened, but the softness with which Jamie does it gives Mako pause.

Then, Jamie giggles and says, “This was a _date_ , wasn’t it?”

Mako blushes and has to clear his throat before he can mumble a quiet, “Yeah.”

“Aces,” Jamie sighs, and it’s enough to make Mako want to fall off the bike in a pile of relieved mush.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Thyme-Basalt for beta-ing this for me! You were a big help with orchestra info and terminology.


End file.
